The Exploding Girl

Ivy (Zoe Kazan of REVOLUTIONARY ROAD) returns home to Brooklyn for her summer break from college. She misses her boyfriend, and calls him frequently, but they can't quite seem to connect. She spends a lot of time with her longtime friend, Al (Mark Rendall of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT). Al clearly has a longstanding crush on Ivy, about which he's never done anything, probably out of some combination of fear and respect for their friendship. His confusion is exacerbated when, due to family circumstances, he's forced to stay with Ivy and her mother (Maryann Urbano) during his break from school. As the summer goes on, Ivy deals with her epilepsy and the slow, painful dissolution of her relationship, while Al starts to look for love in other directions. Bradley Rust Gray wrote and directed THE EXPLODING GIRL, while his wife, So Yong Kim, served as a producer. Fans of the Cure will recognize the title as a play on their song "The Exploding Boy," the flip side of "In Between Days," which was the title of Kim's directorial debut, on which Gray served as co-writer and producer. THE EXPLODING GIRL had its North American premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, where it was shown in the World Narrative Competition.

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Credits

Maryann Urbano, Mark Rendall, Zoe Kazan

Critic Reviews

"[A] sweet and tentative new film....Influenced by the contemplative, observant strains in Japanese and European cinema..."New York Times

"Gray has an artful, understated way of conveying what's going on inside, often simply by focusing his camera on Kazan."Entertainment Weekly

"It confronts the mysteries of the everyday by focusing not on life's most dramatic moments but on the low-key spaces in between."Los Angeles Times